Bill Reynolds: Intimidation factor in NCAA Tournament is thing of the past

Monday

Mar 24, 2014 at 5:27 PM

Three mini-basketball columns for the price of one

Three mini-basketball columns for the price of one . . .

NCAA TOURNAMENT

Why have there been so many upsets?

Because there’s not as much difference between the conferences as there used to be. Nor is there as much mystique about the glamour programs as their once was.

Why?

AAU basketball.

Almost every kid with any kind of basketball dreams these days plays AAU basketball, both in regional and national tournaments, to the point that playing against great players and great teams is not as intimidating as it once was. Or why be intimidated when you’ve grown up playing against many of the most talented young players in the country?

The point is that teams are not.

The upsets tell us that. The close games tell us that.

The other common denominator is style of play. Does it sometimes seem as if all the games look the same? They should. Because virtually all the teams play the same way, courtesy of the shot clock. They push the ball, they shoot threes, they play at a frantic pace. If once college basketball was a game of contrasting styles — you want to run and I want to slow it down — the shot clock negates much of the cat and mouse game.

The end result is the sameness we have now, a game designed for a wide television audience.

But it’s also a game that, arguably, never has been more popular. Part of that, no doubt, is that it’s never been presented better, more games for more channels, a wider television audience. And part of it is that the NCAA Tournament is a great tournament, one almost designed to ruin everyone’s brackets, one of the biggest sporting events in the country.

Even if everyone plays the same way.

FRIARS

This past season already is part of PC basketball history, even if it ended just last Friday night.

That’s the reality of sports, the sense that they are like a river, never standing still, always moving forward. So Bryce Cotton’s heroics already are in the past tense, even if he will live forever in the PC media guide. It’s the nature of sport.

And in all the important ways, next season began the minute Ed Cooley walked out of the interview room Friday night in San Antonio. That, too, is the nature of sport.

For this is now a program at the crossroads, one that can continue to grow and evolve or one that takes a step back next year. History tells us that’s what happened in 2004, the last time the Friars went to the NCAA Tournament. History also tells us that’s what has happened in the past two decades or so with the Friars — the inability to sustain a great year, whatever the reason.

I suspect it won’t happen now.

At the most obvious level, the Friars will return three starters next year, plus sixth man Carson Desrosiers. They also will return the highly regarded Kris Dunn, who missed this year with an injury, some promising recruits and also Rodney Bullock, out this year after a well-publicized campus incident. The point is they will have talent.

And maybe equally as important, this is not the old Big East Conference, arguably the toughest league in the country. This is the new, revamped Big East, one that’s easier, more hospitable to the Friars. This can’t be overstated.

Not for the future of the Friars, anyway.

A future that looks brighter than it has looked in too long a time.

“SHOWTIME: Magic, Kareem, Riley, and the Los Angeles Dynasty of the ’80s,” by Jeff Pearlman.

It was showtime all right, and a lot of the show took place after the games, according to this explosive new book that goes behind the curtain in the basketball Oz that was the Lakers in the 1980s.

Part of that was go-go ’80s, part of it was cocaine that went through the party culture like an invading army, and part of it was the larger-than-life personalities of Magic Johnson, Pat Riley and Kareem Abdul Jabbar, all in the dream capital of the country. Suffice it to say you couldn’t have made it up, complete with women who were as available as M&M’s in a party dish.

Pearlman does a great job of detailing the different personalities in the ego-fest that was the Lakers. From the aloof Abdul Jabbar, portrayed as someone who didn’t like white people and had no close friends on the team; to the irrepressible Magic, who treated L.A. and all its goodies like a kid set loose in a candy store; to the driven Pat Riley, the Lakers were like a Hollywood production with a great cast.

Then there was owner Jerry Buss — part satyr, part business genius, who lived in the mansion that Hollywood legends Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford had once lived in, dated 18-year-olds even though he was in his 50s, and partied out of a 16-year-old boy’s fantasies.

Oh yeah, then there was the basketball.

“Showtime” captures all that, too, the wonderful era of the Celtics-Lakers’ rivalry, Magic versus Bird, East Coast versus West Coast, all of it. It’s not only a great read, it’s a great slice of the game’s history, too.